did your online giving grow in 2011?

The juggernaut Blackbaud recently released their report on online giving in 2011.

Surprisingly they do a good job of not selling too much and definitely making some actionable points.

Overall, online giving grew 13% over the previous year. I’ll let you spend some time on the report. It’s worth a quick read followed by a long examination of your situation.

Some interesting points from the report:

Growth by sector (page 3):

Education grew 26.3%

Higher Education grew 21%

Arts grew 13.1%

Human Services Grew 12.5%

Growth by org size (page 2):

Small (less than $1M) grew 12.8%

Medium ($1M -$10M) grew 13.1%

Large ($10M+) grew 8.6%

And in a helpful section they report what percent each sized organization’s income was from online giving (page 7):

Small (less than $1M) 8.7%

Medium ($1M -$10M) 6.0%

Large ($10M+) grew 6.1%

So…where do you stand? Blackbaud has a nifty worksheet beginning on page 9 so you can step through where your organization stacks up.

I guess it is possible that Blackbaud could have a motive for this kind of report (OK, I can’t even write that with a straight face). But you don’t have to buy their stuff to get a good takeaway from this report.

The best thing this report could do for you is validate what your gut has been telling you.

Use this to either confirm that you are on the right track with that redesign. Use this to confirm that you really, really, really should be concentrating on fixing that donation page. Use this to confirm that a redesign (a strategic redesign, not a “pretty” redesign) is worth it.

And you can always do a quick “Aunt Ruby” and get some directions to go.

What do you think about this report? How’s your online giving? What are the barriers that keep you from growing? I love the conversation!

Steve Thomas
Partner, Oneicity

(photo credit: k.landerholm)